These simple steps will walk you through the process of inserting the cover widget into a template and customizing it to make your reports pop.

Section Links

Inserting a Cover Widget

Customizing the Cover Widget

Formatting text

Clips

Inserting a Cover Widget

1. Create a new template or open a desired template from the list 

NinjaNote: If you need to insert a page, right-click on the first page in the template directory, and click on the 'Insert Above' button from the dropdown that opens to insert a blank page at the beginning of your template. 

2. Once you're on the appropriate template page, navigate to the Widgets directory. This is found on the right-hand side of your screen and is the first icon on the line of sub icons

3. Clicking on the name of the Layout subsection reveals the cover widget

4. Click on the Cover icon and the default cover widget will automatically be added to the current page of your template

Customizing the Cover Widget 

Now that we have the cover widget in place, there are multiple ways to customize it. Of course, you can keep the default settings, but there is so much more you can do!

1. Underneath the Widget Inspector (the third of four inspector tabs) there are multiple different styling options you can employ: 

• Background Image - you can select one of 5 pre-defined images, upload your own image using the 'Custom' option, or remove the image altogether by selecting 'None'. 
• Background Properties - allows you to reposition the image, stretch or re-align the image and insert a background color to your cover image. 
• Table Text Style, Table Row Font Style, Table Header Row Font Style, and Table Alternate Row Font Style - all offer standard text formatting options to modify anything included in a table in your cover widget. You can modify text size, style, weight, color, alignment, and the table background fill color. 

Formatting Text in the Cover Widget

There are 2 ways to modify the text you see on the cover page. By double-clicking on the text, you can modify it to read whatever you like, and the only limit to how much text you can include on your page is real estate - ie the available space on the page. 

Option 1: Modifying the text formatting via Global Settings: 

• Open the Template Global Settings by clicking on the globe icon (fourth of four inspector tabs) in the inspector panel near the right
• Scroll down to the "Theme" section, and then the "Cover Page" subsection
• From here you can change the default font type, weight, and size of the text used in all text widgets on your cover page

Option 2: Using the in-page text formatting options. 

• In the Cover Widget, double-click on the section of text you'd like to reformat
• This will open up a formatting bar of options at the top of the template editor page
• Use this to format an individual section of text
• You have the same sections as in the Global settings, but with the addition of the options to Italicise, Underline or Strike Through the highlighted text

In the formatting toolbar, you also have the options to: 

• Highlight
• Change the Paragraph Style (IE from text to one of 6 header types (these are defined in style at the Global Settings level in the Typography section)
• Realign the text
• Include an ordered (numbered) or unordered (bullet-pointed) list
• Remove all formatting
• Include a table
• Insert a Vertical Line. 

NinjaNote: If you reformat a section of text using the in template builder formatting tools, and then delete all of the text from that widget, the settings will revert to the defaults, as found in the Global Settings. 

Clips

The final and one of the most powerful areas of the Text formatting bar is Clips, symbolized by a plus sign. But what are they? Clips are placeholders for dynamic pieces of information - they can be things such as account or agency logos, dates, or pieces of dynamically introduced text. And why are they important? Because they help keep your cover page (and template when used elsewhere) scaleable! 

On the cover page, you can see where clips have been used as the text they enclose is surrounded by curly brackets: {{my clip is here}} 

In the screenshot below we have 2 instances of clips, one showing a placeholder for an {{agency logo}}, and one a placeholder for an {{account name}}. 

1. Click into the text box, and click on the plus icon from the text formatting toolbar

2. From the resulting fly-over window select the desired clip from one of the following categories:

• General - including placeholders for Account details (names, contacts, email addresses, etc attributed to an account)
• Images - including Agency and Account Logos
• Dates - which are used to detail the run date of a report and include place markers such as report start date, report end date, run date, this year, etc

3. Once you've inserted a clip, the information held inside the curly bracket will automatically populate when the template is used to generate a report or dashboard depending on the account that you are running the report against. So if for example I use the {{Account}} clip and use the template for a report for the Medallion account, the '{{Account}}' text will be replaced with 'Medallion'. If I use the same template to run a report for NinjaCat Test Account, the '{{Account}}' text will be replaced with 'NinjaCat Test Account'

NinjaNote: Clips will allow you to edit the text contained within the {{ }} - for example, if you take the  {{Last Month}} clip and edit it to read {{Previous Last Month}} your clip will not work! Instead of replacing the text with a date, you will simply see the text displayed as you edited it {{Previous Last Month}} so please be careful!